


A Cloak of Green

by rabidsamfan



Category: Suikoden I
Genre: Gen, canonical character deaths referenced
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 05:32:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13047501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidsamfan/pseuds/rabidsamfan
Summary: Immortality gives you a long time to think things through.A long time to dream.Even if the dreams aren’t always your own.





	A Cloak of Green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MarsDragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarsDragon/gifts).



_Immortality gives you a long time to think things through._  
_A long time to dream._  
_Even if the dreams aren’t always your own._

 ---//---

General Teo of the Imperial Army, Commander of the Northern Forces and trusted emissary of the Emperor, sighed and rubbed his eyes. Generals didn’t get many chances to sleep to begin with, but ever since the reinforcements and the supply wagons had arrived from Antei, his head had scarcely touched a pillow. He could have -- and had -- delegated the rebuilding of Duha Fortress to a master builder. He could have -- and had -- put the raw new troops into the hands of his sergeants for training and toughening up. But until he could persuade at least one _respectable_ woman to live in the half-finished fortress next to the Karaka desert, he was solely responsible for the most precious cargo that had been sent to him. If only he’d had a little warning! But the message that his wife’s mother had been found dead had arrived with the same draft of recruits as the child himself, and since his wife had died when the baby was born, where else should young Tir be sent but to his last surviving relation?

“Papa?” Three days now, and Tir was still hesitant about addressing Teo, those dark eyes huge and worried. But the tiny hands were clutching Teo’s cloak, as if the boy were trusting him not to walk away more quickly than short legs could follow. “Papa? Wa?”

“Water?” Perhaps if he’d kept the child by his side, he wouldn’t have to guess so often. But it seemed he was right this time, for Tir grinned. “Wa!” he said again and loosed one hand to reach upwards.

That signal, at least, Teo had learned, and he bent to pick up the baby and set him on his shoulders. “All right,” he said. “Let’s find some water.” Although water would lead to food, and both food and water to another round of what his lieutenants tactfully referred to as “sanitation engineering.” But hopefully afterwards Tir would fall asleep, and Teo could get some work done.

Despite the fact that he was not in armor, and wearing his oldest and most mended cloak, he was recognized now and then as he made his way from his quarters down to the kitchen courtyard, and that meant stopping to answer questions, or redirect efforts, or just return the salutes which were his due, doing his best to ignore the smiles the men tried to hide at the sight of their general reduced to a packhorse. Tir babbled happily from his vantage point, tiny fingers tangled in Teo’s hair.

The kitchen courtyard was its usual madhouse. Along the northern wall, the great ovens and hearths were being tended by the cooks, while a long double line of soldiers carrying huge ten-man-squad messpots between them snaked towards the tables where the men on kitchen duty were portioning out stew and bread under the eye of the oldest journeyman cook. Other soldiers were at the pumps, bringing up water for a third line of men, these carrying a squad’s worth of waterbags to be filled, while a fourth line queued up to trade empty ration kegs of beer for full ones. It was noisy and chaotic, and Teo wondered again if there weren’t some better way to feed everyone, some way that didn’t have four out of ten men lose time from their work twice a day. Maybe if he apprenticed more men to the cooks, he could find a way to have more of the work done nearer the men they were meant to feed.

They were almost to the well when Tir began to squirm and call out “O! O! O!”

“Now what do you mean?” Teo wondered, reaching up to pull Tir down from his shoulders and prop him on one hip.

“O!” Tir said again, pointing towards the line of men and beginning to babble excitedly about something Teo couldn’t even begin to understand, except for the occasional punctuating “O!” Before he knew it, the baby was squirming free, and he barely managed to get him to the ground without dropping him. “O!” Tir cried again, tugging hard against Teo’s last-minute grab for the back of his shirt.

“Little one?” The exclamation from the line of soldiers only made Tir more determined to get loose, but they were within a few feet now, and Teo judged it safe enough to let go. The baby’s headlong rush was blocked straightaway by a lad wearing the colors of the recruit cohort, who crouched down with open arms, waterskins falling from his hands.

“O!” Tir crowed, little arms stretching as far as they could around the youngster. He began to babble again, and the recruit nodded at the baby as if he understood.

“I take it you two have met,” Teo said, amused.

“I watched him on the wagons,” the recruit said, in a voice that had yet to crack. He wasn’t much more than a child himself, Teo realized, despite the uniform tunic that hung loosely over thin soldiers. The stubble of hair left on his head by the army barber might be yellow under the dust, and his skin was pale enough to have burnt during the march. Teo was just beginning to wonder what part of the Empire had thrown him adrift when the lad looked up and stared at him with brilliant green eyes. “It’s you!” the recruit exclaimed, his mouth agape. “It’s you!”

“It’s General Teo!” one of his fellows hissed, kicking him ungently from behind. “Stand up!”

The lad scrambled to his feet, still holding the baby in his arms. “S-s-sorry,” he stammered. “I’m s-s-sorry, sir. It’s just that... I remember you.”

“And I, you,” Teo replied, careful not to let his astonishment be revealed by his tone. He remembered too, remembered those green eyes watching him dully out of a gaunt, filthy face, not even a year gone by. “You’re the boy we found in the desert. The one who escaped from the slavers. Gr...” He closed his eyes, trying to recall the name.

“Gremio, sir. My name is Gremio.”

Tir crowed, “O!” again, and Teo couldn’t help but smile. Clearly, his son was delighted to have found a familiar face. “Didn’t we send you to learn to be a servant in Antei?” He’d asked his mother-in-law to find the refugee boy a place, although he’d forgotten about it in the face of new skirmishes with Jowston.

“You did, sir.” Gremio straightened, swallowing uncertainly. “B-b-but. S-s-soldiers get fed.”

Teo nodded, the germ of an idea beginning to grow. Truth to tell, young Gremio was still too stick-thin to make much of a soldier, and it would be a shame to turn anyone Tir liked so much into arrow fodder. But why not grab two birds from the bush? “Finish your training, and I’ll have you apprenticed to the cooks,” Teo said, reaching out to collect his son once more. “And after that... we’ll see.”

 ---//---

_He spends a lot of time fishing._  
_Sometimes, he puts bait on the hook. Sometimes he doesn’t. Mostly he watches the water, and daydreams._  
_The fish bite anyway. He isn’t sure why._

 ---//---

Odessa waited until her mother and father were safely on their way to the palace before she hunted out the cloak she’d bought from her maidservant. She’d had to beg to be excused from going to the dance tonight. Her parents had argued that she would be bored if left by herself, but it was bound to be just as boring at the ball. All anyone seemed to want to talk about was the war. And yet, whenever _she_ asked about the battles, she got told not to trouble herself. “It will all work out, sooner rather than later, and everyone will prosper the way they did under the old Emperor,” was all her mother would say. “Someday.” And in the meantime, it wasn’t safe for a noble girl to walk the streets. Not everyone was happy that Geil Rugner had taken the throne, no matter what her father might say about it being rightfully his.

Odessa wished she could talk to Mathiu about it. But Mathiu was at Panna Yakuta, with the Pretender and Uncle Leon, and she was stuck in Gregminster. If she were a commoner, or a boy, she could be off having proper adventures, instead of practicing her courtesies and studying how to get a husband. But with this cloak hiding her dress, she could at least go to the shops by herself the way she had before all the fuss. She needed new strings for her favorite bow, didn’t she? At least archery was considered a ladylike accomplishment!

The district where she lived was largely untouched -- just a mansion here or there boarded up or filled with raucous soldiers. The Judiciar had confiscated the homes and property of anyone foolish enough to support the Crown Prince right after the trial. But as she made her way into the lower city, Odessa noticed gaps where there should be no gaps, crumpled piles of stones, and smoldering timbers where wooden homes once stood.

The weapons shop was a ruin. Oh, the building still stood, but it would take a braver soul than Odessa to climb to the upper stories with the gaping holes showing through to the street beyond. She wondered what had happened to the shopkeeper and his family. She tugged her cloak more tightly around herself and hoped that they’d simply moved the shop to a less damaged building. Not that there was time to hunt for it. The sun was already low. According to her father, the “irregulars” which the Emperor had called in to cleanse Gregminster of rebels were ruffians, not much better than bandits. They might not stop to ask whose daughter she was once it was past curfew, and if she spent a night in jail, her mother would never hear the end of it.

She hadn’t gone more than a handful of steps when she heard the clop of horses’ hooves: officers coming, or someone likely to know her parents. Odessa stepped into a deepening shadow, not willing to be hauled home from even so small an adventure. But when she dared peek out from under her hood, the two horses coming down the lane had only one rider between them -- the boy from the armor shop. Odessa was surprised. Even her pony had been requisitioned by the army, although her father’s carriage horses had been held immune.

“I did it!” the armor shop boy cried out as he rode down the street. “The bandits are after me!”

“What?!” To Odessa’s surprise another boy stepped out of a doorway not ten feet away. He was a little older than she was, thin, and pale with long yellow hair. His green cloak had seen better days, and by the limp and the pattern of old and new bruises on his face, so had he. His eyes widened, and he stumbled back a step a moment later. Odessa turned to see that the boy with the horses was being pursued by pack of foot soldiers, still well behind, but coming fast.

The rider clearly wasn’t too concerned about the pursuit. “Gremio, jump on the horse! We’re breaking through the main gate.”

Oh, Odessa’s father was going to be so angry if she got involved with this, but it was so exciting to see. She was even close enough to hear the green-cloaked boy when he closed his fists and eyes and said, “I can do this. I have to save the Young Master.” He took a deeper breath and opened his eyes, heading over toward the side of the street where the riderless horse would be. “I’ve got it!”

How could anyone look that determined and that scared at the same time? And why did he seem familiar, now that his face was lit by the reddening rays of the setting sun? Had she heard his name before? Maybe he was someone’s servant. But if he was, why wasn’t he applying to the Emperor for help to save his master? Oh, if only Odessa wasn’t just a girl!

But it was too late to even offer; the horses were there, and the armor shop boy was calling. “We’re going! Gremio, run!”

Green cloak flying behind him, Gremio darted into the street, grabbing for the pommel of the empty saddle and leaping up into the saddle. A circus performer couldn’t have done it any more neatly, but Odessa caught herself before calling attention to herself by applauding.

“Alright! Here we go!” In a clatter of hooves, the two boys rode away, the echoes distorting their voices as they argued over something Odessa couldn’t quite divine.

 ---//---

_Sometimes he looks, hoping to see signs of change. Wondering if it is too soon to know._  
_It isn’t as if it’s been very long since the War. It isn’t as if people change overnight. It isn’t even as if he’s certain he wants to see anything change. It won’t be as lonely, going down the centuries, if someone goes with him._  
_But he dreams of loneliness._

\---//---

Ted had done this before. Too many times. He knew to keep his head down. But there was something about the voices around him that was familiar this time. Something about the cadence, the accents. It had been a long time, but he still remembered voices like these from the worst day of his life.

He tightened his fist around the rune in his palm. The first strangers had been so nice. Especially the boy who led them. Tir, his name had been. They had all looked to him. Viktor, who was so strong, and Flik, who was like someone out of a tale. Cleo, her hair determined to escape in the wind, and Pahn, the silent one, the both of them always watching for threats. There’d been a kobold too, the first one Ted had ever seen, called Kuromimi. Ted had wanted nothing more than to talk to them, to talk to Tir, and make friends. But there had been no time. No sooner had they come when more strangers came, strangers who were anything but friendly. Tir and his companions tried to defend the village from Windy and the other rune thieves. But it hadn’t helped. Swords and arrows and bo staves were useless against magic. Only hiding worked. Only running away.

Or trudging away, as the case might be. It wasn’t like refugee trains could ever really go fast. He ought to just be grateful that the Scarlet Moon Empire had decided to provide them an escort to wherever they were going. Grateful that the Empire needed people just now, to replace the folks who had been lost during their civil war.

Grateful that there might be peace, if only for a little while.

One of the smaller children stumbled, and Ted stopped to help adjust the pack she was carrying. She gave him a mistrustful look. “I’m not going to take anything,” he told her, as he stood back to make sure the straps were even. “I just want you to stop slowing us down.”

“There’s room in the food wagon, now that we’ve eaten some of it,” said one of the guards, and Ted looked up to find Cleo atop a gul-horse, her expression impatient, but not unkind. Luckily, shock kept him tongue-tied long enough to remember that she wouldn’t recognize him. No one could, who didn’t hold a True Rune of their own. She must have been right about coming back to the past. Three hundred years? Had it really been so long?

“Um...” he managed, and then swallowed and pushed the little girl forward. “Uh. Room on the wagons. Yeah. That’d be good.”

Cleo nodded. “Bring her this way,” she said, and turned her gul-horse back toward the wagons that followed the train of refugees.

Ted shrugged and took hold of the little girl’s hand. “Looks like you’re going to get a ride.”

“We could just wait for them to catch up,” she offered, as he pulled her out of the line and they started back the way they’d come. “My feet hurt.”

Ted shook his head. First rule of being a refugee: you didn’t make the people with weapons mad at you, or any more impatient than they already were. “The sooner we get to the wagons, the sooner you can rest them,” he told her. But he did walk a little slower, since her legs were short. Second rule of being a refugee: don’t waste energy you’re going to need later. And the wagons were coming their way, after all.

As they got nearer, one of the wagons pulled out of the line. The driver, a long skinny fellow in a green cloak, was arguing with Cleo. “Sh-shouldn’t we ask f-f-first?” Ted heard him say. “M-master Teo...”

“General Teo wants us to get everyone to Panna Yakuta in one piece,” Cleo said. “And if that means you end up babysitting half the children, well, you’re good at that.”

“B-b-but I need to make the s-s-supper.”

Cleo shrugged. “So, have them help you. It won’t be the first time.”

“Th-that always t-takes longer,” Green Cloak protested, but Cleo ignored him in favor of turning to greet Ted and his companion.

“This is Gremio. He can watch Little Sister for you.”

“Oh, she isn’t my sister,” Ted said, but he gave the child a boost up to the seat by Gremio anyway. “I just saw she needed help.”

That got a smile out of Cleo. “Well, so does Gremio. Do you know how to drive a wagon?”

“Of course I do.” Ted was glad of the time he’d spent on the fog ship. Now that he had grown five inches, people were more likely to believe him when he said that he was competent. It had been awful, being stuck as a child for a hundred years.

“All right, then…” Cleo paused, and belatedly Ted realized that she wanted his name.

“Ted. My name is Ted.”

“Ted can drive the wagon, and you can peel vegetables.” She sounded very pleased with herself, and Ted tried not to smirk. But a glance at Gremio only showed the man to be relieved.

“Oh, that would save so much time!” Gremio reached down a hand to help Ted clamber up, and then went over the back of the seat into the bed of the wagon, settling onto a box and reaching into a barrel of roots. “Just follow the others,” he said absently, already tugging free his belt knife.

Cleo laughed out loud and rode back up to her position in the line. Ted wondered if maybe he looked older than he thought, because while it was nice being trusted, it was strange to be trusted with a wagon full of food five minutes after being met. Unless Gremio was a lot more of a warrior than he seemed.

“Aren’t you worried that I’ll crash the wagon?” he asked, as he carefully maneuvered the wagon back into the line.

“No,” Gremio said, managing somehow to create a thin curve of peel from the root in his hand despite the bumpiness of the trail. “You said you could drive.” Then he blinked and raised his head to look around. “You can drive, can’t you? It looks like you can drive,” he said, turning his attention back to his vegetables.

“I can drive,” Ted said, satisfied that Gremio wasn’t going to pay attention very hard. “I can even teach Little Sister to drive.”

“That’s nice,” Gremio muttered.

Ted noticed that Gremio didn’t stammer when he wasn’t being pressured, so he waited until he’d taught the basics of rein handling to the little girl before asking as casually as possible, “Have you known Cleo for very long?”

“Since the war,” Gremio said. “Not your war, ours. Master Teo hired her to be a bodyguard for the Young Master.”

The Young Master? Was Tir here too? Ted wanted to ask, but he didn’t want to be told no. “I thought Cleo said Teo was a general,” he said instead, thinking to work his way around to the subject of anyone young enough to be Tir.

“Oh, he is,” Gremio said, brightening. “He’s commander of the Northern Forces, usually. But with General Kwanda Rosman keeping the border, the Emperor needed someone to handle the refugees. And Master Teo is best at that. He’s the one who rescued me.”

“Rescued you?” the little girl asked, which saved Ted the trouble.

Gremio looked up from his work and smiled at her. “Yes. I was like you, running from trouble. But Master Teo found me. He gave me a new life.”

“And then he gave you a headache,” said a deep voice, startling them both. From the far side of the wagon a horse appeared, the rider an older man with wings of grey at the temples of his black hair and sharp eyes. Behind him, a boy in a scarlet tunic was maneuvering himself into position to jump onto the wagon. The resemblance between them was unmistakable. “Go on, Tir. You’ve been enough of a nuisance for one day. Bother Gremio for a while.”

Ted was barely aware of Gremio’s protests to General Teo. He was far too busy looking into eyes he’d never thought he’d see again. “Hello,” he said. “My name is Ted.”

  
\---//---

_The Rune of Life and Death has chosen him. Soul Eater, True Rune, defender and destroyer, all within his grasp. His father, his inspiration, his friend, all trapped forever in its merciless heart. Only Gremio has ever escaped it. And Gremio stays with him, tethered by loyalty._

_Or is it something more? He cannot tell. He only knows that he dreams of things he never witnessed, knows things he should not know. There is a bond beyond love now, something that might not be vulnerable to time._

_It is too soon to tell._

_The Soul Eater is a hunger, unsatisfied, in his palm._

_Someday, perhaps, it will swallow Gremio again._

_But until it does, he dreams._

**Author's Note:**

> beta thanks to angelsaves


End file.
